Oscars, Super Bowls and the Big Forget

Oscars, Super Bowls and the Big Forget

WHY YOU SHOULD CARE

Because when culture is like fast food, only fast food will be culture.

January 29, 2015

It happens around the same time every year — this set of cultural milestones that loom so large we count the days until their arrival. And then? We promptly forget them.

It’s possible that a bit of amnesia could provide a great deal of social benefit. Remembering that you hate to eat liver means you avoid eating liver. On the other hand, amnesia has its dangers: Forgetting which cave the bear lives in could prove deadly.

But selective amnesia? Well, that’s an experiment in progress. When it comes to hyped cultural events, the kind that suck all the air out of the offices, homes and “chatterverse” where they hold sway — the Oscars, the Super Bowl, the Golden Globes, the World Cup — our collective memory is woefully inadequate. We care more about the event when it happens than we ever felt possible and then immediately forget that we ever cared about it at all.

Making us, whether just stupid or forgetful, the perfect consumers. But what about those Pats, eh?